


we gladiate but I guess we're really fighting ourselves

by pearwaldorf



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Implied/Referenced Torture, Movie: Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Multi, Telepathic Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 21:35:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20453912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearwaldorf/pseuds/pearwaldorf
Summary: She dreams, and she is back in the fight with Ren. But there is no frenzied struggle for survival; she knows how this turns out. It’s replaced with the exhilaration of the meld, in a way that justfits. They flow like water in the Force: apart sometimes, but still the same thing fundamentally.She wakes up, and the absence of that communion almost brings her to tears. But she will not waste water on something that will never happen again, and certainly nothim.It could always be like this.His voice in her head is almost gentle, and somehow it makes it even more repulsive.You and me, back to back, against the whole universe.





	we gladiate but I guess we're really fighting ourselves

He was not dead yet, not exactly—  
parts of him were dead already, certainly other parts were still only waiting  
for something to happen, something grand, but it isn't  
always about me,  
he keeps saying, though he's talking about the only heart he knows—  
He could build a city. Has a certain capacity. There's a niche in his chest  
where a heart would fit perfectly  
and he thinks if he could just maneuver one into place—  
well then, game over.

From [Road Music](http://youngerpoets.yupnet.org/2008/04/17/road-music-crush-by-richard-siken-2004-winner/), Richard Siken

  


* * *

  


Their flight from the First Order leaves Rey little time for food, sleep, or hygiene, much less checking to see if Ren is still in her head. They spend five mostly sleepless standard days jumping from system to system, praying the First Order considers the Resistance eliminated. As tensions escalate and spirits frazzle, the General retreats to her room for a long time. When she emerges, she tells Chewie to set a course for Bespin.

The last of the Resistance huddles at the top of the Falcon’s ramp, watching the General greet the Baron Administrator of Cloud City. He’s a human man with dark skin, gray in his mustache but still some darkness along his receding hairline. It’s not that he looks bad now, but Rey thinks he must have been very handsome when he was younger.

The Baron and the General hug, and she says something to him that makes him laugh, even if there’s an edge to it. They turn around, and he makes a “Come on” gesture. Poe squares his shoulders and goes down the ramp first. Finn grabs her hand, and they follow behind. The General introduces them to the Baron, and he strokes his mustache, smiling.

“So these are your troublemakers?” He looks at the General. “I have to say, they remind me of some people I used to know.”

Her eyes are sad. “I can only hope they do better than we did.”

The Baron puts an arm around her shoulders. “It’s what we all hope for. Come on, let’s get you settled.”

\--

The next few days are busy, helping people find places to sleep, eat, and get medical attention. She falls asleep almost immediately when she hits the mattress, and remembers nothing until her alarm goes off the next morning.

Finally, it seems like she can leave things alone for a little while without it all falling apart. On the next rest day, she goes up to one of the public viewpoints. It’s early enough there’s little traffic, vehicular or sentient. She sits cross-legged on a bench and looks over the city. She’s imagined this view ever since she found that postcard on Jakku, and she’s surprised to see it actually holds up in reality.

_Funny how little it’s changed,_ Ren comments. She gets a glimpse of the same view from a different angle, riding on someone’s (tall, with brown hair) shoulders. She looks down on a younger Baron Calrissian laughing and joking with whoever’s holding him up. (She was right. He was very handsome when he was younger.)

She’s grateful she’s alone, because she nearly takes out a wall in her surprise and panic. _Where have you been?_ She demands.

_Miss me? _There’s a smirk in his voice, but also a strange pleased feeling, like a child who’s decided any attention is better than none at all.

_Like a toothache,_ she thinks tartly. The expression seems to discomfit him a little, and she realizes she must have picked it up from the General.

_Why are you even here? Don’t you have minions to intimidate, worlds to bomb into submission?_

A pause._ I was… curious to see where you would end up._

Her heart sinks as she realizes he now knows the location of the remainder of the Resistance.

_Settle yourself. Cloud City is technically non-aligned, and thus safe from the First Order. Besides, there are too few of you to be any sort of real threat. _

_No thanks to you._

She does not expect remorse, but the smug contentment radiating from him at a job thoroughly done makes her feel sick to her stomach. _You remain a monster,_ she thinks, horrified. _Perhaps Luke knew what he was doing all along. _

A flicker of something, almost too quick to identify. If they were face to face, she might call it a flinch. It is not a thought she meant to broadcast to him, but she’s not sorry he caught it.

_You Jedi, you’re all alike,_ he sneers. _So quick to judge, all wrapped up in your own dogma you can’t see new paths forward. _

_I’m not a Jedi,_ she counters. _I wanted someone to teach me more control. _

_Always this obsession with reining yourself in. You limit your capability by drawing boundaries around your emotions. _

_We’ll see about that. _She flings the thought at him like a challenge. If he heard, there is no indication.

—

They can’t bunk on the first fifty levels—too noticeable. They end up in a technically abandoned section that used to house tibanna gas miners before they automated most of the production. Rey doesn’t care, as long as Rose is looked after by an actual med droid and doctors. She remains unconscious, and Finn rarely leaves her side.

It takes her and Poe’s combined effort to persuade him to at least eat and sleep sometimes. General Organa shakes her head and drops datapads full of tasks that can be done at Rose’s bedside. (“I want to let him be, but we need every hand we can muster, especially now.”)

When Rey is done with her work for the day (or is forcibly chased out by somebody who thinks she’s done enough), she sits with Finn. Slowly, she learns about the time Finn and Rose spent together.

“She saved me,” Finn says, looking at Rose’s prone form. “I thought the best way to help the Resistance was to destroy a threat. She risked her life to show me how wrong I was.”

_I love her already,_ Rey thinks.

_You’re so easily attached. Especially to all this Resistance scum, _Ren sneers. She envisions a rude gesture at him.

“Also, she kissed me.” Finn looks a little embarrassed at this. Rey’s watched enough holos, even on Jakku, that she expects a flare of jealousy, or even anger. But instead there is a pleased feeling, delight that somebody else thinks Finn is wonderful.

Rey takes his hand. “She thought she was dying. In her place I’d kiss you too.”

“Really?” Finn grins at this revelation, before remembering he’s a Big Deal. “That’s cool.” There’s still a hint of a smile on his face though.

A rustle from the bed. “Finn?” Rose’s voice is weak but steady. Rey drops his hand so he can move closer.

Rose puts out her hand and Finn takes it, brushing her fingers to his lips. “Hey. I’m here.”

She notices Rey, and smiles softly. “Hi,” she says. “I’m Rose.”

Rey’s stomach flips, but in a pleasant way. “I know. Finn’s told me all about you.”

—

She starts meditating in the little park built into this section, and finds she has company. Sometimes her friends come, occasionally the General, but the core of the regulars are people she didn’t know very well at first. Even without reaching into the Force, it is comforting to feel a sense of connection to the people around her. Sometimes, though, she casts her awareness out, and is disappointed when she finds the same things she did before.

She peers deep into the connections she has with her friends. Poe has the Force sense of a potato, as the General so charmingly put it once. Rose is much the same in this regard, but she sees the light of the bond she shared (still does, maybe) with her sister. Rey looks at the threads of light that emanate from what she conceptualizes as herself. Shared ancestry can be part of what forms links between people, but looking at how bright the connections are between her and so many others, she understands it is nowhere near the whole.

She knows why exactly she pins that sort of hope on Finn, that he might somehow be Force-sensitive. He’s special and important in so many ways, why not this one too? But he’s not, and her disappointment at it makes her cry, even though she’s not even quite sure what it is she’s mourning.

_It was never there in the first place. So it’s not something you could have lost. _There is no vindictiveness or cruelty in Ren’s statement, just mere statement of fact. Somehow that makes it sting even more.

—

The Baron--Lando, Rey corrects, has given them some decommissioned ships. Many of them are in usable condition, but some? They make the Falcon look new. She, Poe, and Rose look them over, deciding which ones are worth attempting to repair and others which are good only for scrap. (These would buy me a whole year of portions, she thinks, and squashes the impulse to hide parts away for later.)

After going through their list of ships for the day, they get into the elevator. Rose has a smear of grease on her cheek, and before she can think better of it Rey reaches out, wipes it away with a rag. She worked on engines all day. How is her skin so soft?

“I think Poe might need some attention too.” Rose smirks when she notices Poe staring at them.

Rey is not unfamiliar with this look: she sees it sometimes when she’s with Finn and Poe thinks neither of them are paying attention. It’s a little bit wistful, but also hungry. It makes Rey think of nights on Jakku; when it was just her, the wind, and the stars above, the loneliness even sharper than the pains in her stomach. On some level, she’s been cognizant of his attraction to both her and Finn, even if it’s not something she’s figured out what to do with. But seeing that look directed at Rose too? Suddenly a lot of things fall into place.

“Come on,” she says to Poe, tugging at his collar until he leans down. He kisses eager, passionate, like all he was waiting for was permission.

“Don’t think you’re getting out of this, Tico,” Poe warns.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Rose’s voice is a little breathy, and there are two spots of color on her cheeks. Rey takes the opportunity to kiss her way down the side of Rose’s face, ending right behind her ear. She feels Poe at her back, the tilt of Rose’s head as she figures out the best angle of approach. Rose makes a noise in the back of her throat, impatient and desirous, and all Rey can think of is how much she wants to touch them both.

The elevator dings when they reach their selected floor. They separate from each other just long enough to make it to their rooms, at which point it becomes a tangle of limbs and mouths on the couch. At some point the door opens and Finn enters, not sure what to do about the scene in front of him.

Rey reaches out a hand to pull him towards the couch. Poe and Rose have already made room. He settles between them, and there is something in the back of her head that clicks into place, like it was just waiting for everything to come together.

—

She’s on a scouting mission with Finn and Poe when they’re ambushed by bandits. A fight ensues, and the bandits are defeated. They know each other in and out of this context, they’ve trained together, and they _work_, a machine with parts that fit together well. But she carries a memory of being more than herself: not a machine, something more vibrant and vital than that. She misses it.

She dreams, and she is back in the fight with Ren. But there is no frenzied struggle for survival; she knows how this turns out. It’s replaced with the exhilaration of the meld, in a way that just _fits_. They flow like water in the Force: apart sometimes, but still the same thing fundamentally.

She wakes up, and the absence of that communion almost brings her to tears. But she will not waste water on something that will never happen again, and certainly not _him_.

_It could always be like this._ His voice in her head is almost gentle, and somehow it makes it even more repulsive. _You and me, back to back, against the whole universe._

_Go away,_ she thinks, like shooing a gnat. She closes her eyes and extends her awareness: Poe and Rose curled together in the next room, Finn in the one over from that. BB-8 sits in his charging cradle in the common room. Chewie and the porgs, nestled together for the night. The General and Baron, hunched over a map together. It is… “Enough” implies that there is or should be something better. It is a different type of satisfaction, connectedness. _I am part of something bigger. I always have been. I always will be._

She wakes up late the next morning to see Finn, Poe, and Rose already around the table. Somebody passes her a cup of caf, milky and tooth-rottingly sweet like she prefers. She slides into the last open seat. Ren is conspicuously silent, and she smiles as she takes a sip.

\--

It’s clear that he’s obsessed with her, and probably has been since he learned of her existence. He wants and craves and grasps, but never has. It’s different from the tenderness that radiates from Finn, the soft ease of Poe’s presence and Rose’s generous camaraderie. There is no expectation of reciprocity, even though she would and does feel the same.

_You could have had limitless power, the might of an entire regime at your beck and call. We could have ruled side by side, with nobody to stop us._ An image: two black thrones, painted in some sort of material that appears to suck light like a black hole; the circled teeth of the First Order insignia on a banner.

She sits at his right, the yoke of her dress black against her pale throat. She’s barely recognizable to herself: cruel, sneering, lips and eyes painted dark. She smiles at him, and there is the promise of blood: his, some faceless First Order officer’s; she’s not sure whether it matters. She looks at the foot of her throne, and she can see old stains, dark as rust. The way the rest of the floor gleams, these were left here, as trophies or warnings.

She extends her hand, and he brushes his lips against her knuckles. She can feel how it makes him weak in the knees, the way he would drop to her feet if they were by themselves, hers alone to command. The thin line between a caress and a crack on the face, delivered by the same hand, and the mingled pain-pleasure of the touch.

_You would confuse the two, wouldn’t you. _

_I'd like to think it's a compliment, an accordance of respect. You are the only one worthy of my submission. _

She closes her eyes. _I don't want your submission. I want you to get your head out of your ass. _

The scene shifts. They are alone now, in a dark cavernous chamber that somehow manages to both echo and swallow sound. He peers up at her, the tousle and fall of his hair making him look younger, vulnerable. There’s a smudge of blood at the corner of his lip, a bruise on his cheek. She doesn’t know if she put them there, and it makes her feel a bit queasy. He’s folded into a perfect supplicant’s pose, legs resting against the hard, cold floor. (This, more than anything, underscores its fantasy, she thinks; he would never actually be able to contort those limbs into anything approaching grace.)

He reaches out, catches the hem of her dress between his fingers. _We could bring peace to the galaxy, usher in a golden age. No child hungry, or sold away for scraps._ _It would be so easy._

_If you think so, then you don’t know the first thing about how to make it work. _She twitches her skirt away from his grasp and walks away.

“Rey?” Somebody is gently shaking her shoulder. It’s the General.

“Sorry, I must have drifted off.” She shakes her head, like it could dispel the intensity of whatever it was that transpired.

“I don’t blame you; for how important free passage through neutral territory is, the negotiation and securing of it is boring as hell.” The tone of her voice makes it clear the General wishes she could take a nap herself. “Thank you for being willing to sit in, although I don’t think there’s anything more that you could have caught that I didn’t.”

“If I can help, I will. When I don’t fall asleep, anyways.”

General Organa pats her knee. “You already do so much. You work harder than anybody here.”

“Except for you.”

“Don’t mistake my inability to do anything else for a work ethic.” She smiles, albeit a little sadly, and kisses her on the forehead. “You should go spend time with your friends.”

She warms a little at the contact, like a flower when the sun touches it. Maybe she plays it up more than she would normally, knowing he’s watching, but she’s not sorry. A rush of tenderness and admiration floods her, and she envelops Leia in a hug. In her head, Ren forces a breath past a sudden pain in his chest.

“You should still take some time for yourself,” Rey says against her shoulder.

“I can rest when I’m dead,” she replies. “Now go on, shoo.”

Dismissed, Rey walks back to her quarters to change into something more comfortable.

_She’s always been like that,_ he says. It feels like an old complaint, worn smooth with repetition.

Rey shuffles through his memories, pulls out one where he sat quietly at his mother’s desk in the Galactic Senate, coloring on a datapad while she sat, listening intently to debate on something important but boring. Every so often she would glance down to check on him. He looked up at her, and she smiled, so full of love and joy even the echo of it makes him want to stagger.

_I’d forgotten._ She doesn’t feel like he’s dissembling. He seems to be genuinely astonished this is something that happened.

_Sometimes I think you don’t want to remember._

_— _

He’s having a tantrum again.

She certainly bears no love for anybody in the First Order, but at this point it’s just cruel, like a pittin toying with a mouse.

Hux is, at this point, turning blotchy and red. He can’t even try to gasp for air, the hold on his throat is so tight. She feels Ren’s pleasure in it, how achingly hard he is, and feels absolutely ill. Finally, he lets Hux go, and Hux collapses to the floor, coughing violently enough to retch.

_For Force’s sake go jerk off already,_ she thinks at him in irritation. _*I’m* practically vibrating with need. Also, *gross*_.

_I will not stoop to such base impulses. _He's almost prim about it, and it makes Rey want to laugh hysterically in disbelief. _Spilling my essence saps my power. _

_You are utterly ridiculous if you think this will make you less distracted, _she thinks before stalking off.

She finds Finn in one of the hangars, stacking boxes. She kisses him, slow and purposeful, backing him against the wall. He smiles against her mouth, putting his hands under her shirt. They’re warm but she shivers anyways, feeling them run up her back.

He tugs her over to a pallet of crates, pulls her on top of his lap until she's straddling him. (_You're really going to do this?_ Ren sounds almost panicked, which only increases her resolve.) They kiss until they're both dizzy with it, Finn unbuttoning her shirt so he can touch her breasts. He runs a thumb over a nipple and she gasps, which only emboldens him to replace it with his mouth.

She grinds down against him in retaliation, and is pleased when she feels his hips twitch. He's hard already, and she feels a pulse between her legs when she realizes it.

Finn reaches for the waistband of her pants, and she shimmies them off, probably faster than she should be proud of. He pushes aside her underwear, thumb grazing her clit. She hisses and grinds down on his hand, trying to get him to push his fingers inside her. He does not.

“You're an awful person,” she mutters into his ear.

“It's so you'll appreciate when I'm nice,” he says as he thrusts his fingers inside her. She cries out, only remembering belatedly to muffle her noises into Finn’s shoulder. It's unlikely anyone is close enough to hear, but that would be terribly awkward.

She can feel her climax building, and Finn can probably feel her trembling. He murmurs encouragements into her ear, tells her how hot it makes him. Right before she comes, she kisses him hard, letting him swallow her noises into his mouth. She slumps against him, boneless and spent.

Eventually, he pulls his hand away and she makes a noise of protest. He licks his fingers clean, and her breath hitches as she works at his pants. She reaches down to feel his length, and her cunt clenches at it.

“Come on, I want you,” she whispers, sinking down.

“Oh gods, Rey--” This is the part she likes, where Finn is helpless with the pleasure of it, the only thing he can do is grasp at her hips.

“Do you want me to move?”

“Force, yes.” She rocks against him, and they find their rhythm, pushing together and apart until he says her name again, slipping his fingers between their bodies. She comes again, and he follows her over the edge, breathing hard. They lay there for a little bit, trying to get themselves back together.

Distantly, she can feel Ren’s embarrassment and disgust at having to experience this, as well as his irritation at having to change his pants. _That was the idea, _she thinks at him. He envisions a rude gesture at her, and she smiles against Finn's chest.

—

Their dreams bleed into each other’s, echoes that they have learned to ignore for the most part. But occasionally, they tangle upon points of similarity, shared memory. She’s riding Poe, enjoying the way his curls fan out against the pale sheets, the way he clutches at her hips and says half-wrecked, “Sweetheart, please, oh please—”

An image of Poe beneath her in another way forces into her consciousness. His head is thrown back in pain, and she feels the cold, casual way Ren tore through his memories, rooting through them like a box full of junk.

She wakes up, furious. (She’s sleeping alone tonight, and she’s grateful for small blessings.) Poe couldn't push him out of his mind like she could, and a bit of her wants to flay Ren, peel him bare with the same careless disregard he showed to her and Poe.

_Do your worst,_ he taunts. _I'm waiting._

_What would you know about being hard?_ She snarls. _Every deprivation you had was backed by the knowledge that you would always be rescued: by your parents, Luke, even Snoke. You always had somebody to rely on. _

Another memory: his; a cold cell with a stone slab for a bed, sleep deprived and shivering. Those she understands. The relentless hammer against her thoughts is new.

Snoke was not like Ren. He pulled out memories deliberately, analyzing them with precision like Plutt used to do with a magnifying glass for small, specific parts. He faceted them like gems, magnifying the anger, hatred, and self loathing until they feel like the rattling crystal in Ren’s lightsaber.

_Do you recall nothing good?_ She asks in horror. She’s seen inside his head enough to know that can’t be the case. That it isn’t. (And if she pretends some of those memories of being warm, full, treasured, loved are hers? She dares him to say something, anything about it.)

_You grew up pulling scrap for rations. How can you? _He sounds genuinely surprised.

She thinks back. Certainly it was not a life she would wish on anybody else, but that does not mean there weren’t moments of beauty and contentment (if not necessarily happiness) within it. The spinebarrel blooms and fragrant nightblossoms she gathered to brighten up her home. Her excitement at getting the old Y-wing display to work, so she could study schematics and practice flight sims. How the sky looked at night when she ventured out of the AT-AT, full of stars she couldn’t even begin to count. The absolute giddiness at discovering her alien language lessons paid off when she could speak to people passing through Niima, and give them advice or encouragement as the situation warranted.

It would be so easy to castigate him for what he considers travails in his life. But just because she would react differently doesn’t mean they didn’t hurt him. What he chose to do with those feelings she will judge him for, and harshly, but beneath it, she understands the feeling of being alone and in pain with nobody to help.

_If you ever wanted to talk, I would listen. Or even just sit. _She thinks of him glaring across the fire, half-feral like an animal that wants to be near the light and warmth, but unwilling to make the trade-off of possible contact.

The connection goes blank, like he’s made a deliberate effort to block her out. If it’s anything like it is for her, the energy required to do so is colossal; better to just learn to ignore it. She goes back to sleep, and puts it out of her mind.

Occasionally, as she is drifting off, she feels something shift in her awareness of him, like the brush of a hand on a curtain. It’s never anything more than that, and she wonders at the disappointment that inevitably follows.

—

They learn to live around each other’s presence in their minds, filter out the quotidian humdrum. He no longer makes gagging noises when she expresses affection to her partners and she ignores the ever-present seething when he’s with Hux. It is not a truce, but rather a weary detente out of practicality.

So it is a bit of a surprise when she feels a spike of intense loneliness that is achingly, intimately familiar ripple across their bond. It has been a long time since she experienced it herself, but oh Force, she remembers it, and how oppressive it is when you think it will never end.

_How overdramatic of you,_ she says anyways. _Whether or not I want to be, I’m always here. _

_How lovely,_ he sneers, _having someone who despises you always there to give criticism and useless commentary._

She knows he can’t see her, but she closes her eyes anyways. _If you weren’t the most terrible person I’ve ever met, I wouldn’t have to criticize you_.

And then it occurs to her. You can let him have this. It won’t make a difference in the end.

_I can’t help you, not really. But here is a gift, if you choose to take it._

_Yes_, he says, and she can feel the sob catch like it’s her own throat.

_Let me in, Ben._ He is flayed bare, raw and glistening, and even though she expected it she wants to recoil at how deep the damage goes (this is not Snoke Leia Luke Han anybody but yourself I’m sorry).

_Even when you think you’re being kind, you salt the wound,_ he snarls.

_Shhhh,_ she says absently, already prepared for the bite. (There was a dog once, on Jakku; so thin even the fleas didn’t want it but she did, feeding it sips of water and bits of ration until it was strong enough to run with her on the dunes. Soon afterwards it disappeared, taking a triple portion with it. At the time she was upset, but now, she realizes, might as well be upset at a sun for shining, or a boy-man who has pushed everything away to be lonely.)

She takes his head into her lap, brushes away the curls that have fallen into his face (Mama, mama—Shh sweetheart it was just a dream it was a bad dream). Closes her eyes, thinks about rain: the soft misty stuff on Ahch-To, the kind that thundered on the barrack roofs of D’Qar. The softness of baby porg feathers, the ridiculous delicacy of their little bodies in her hands. The taste of berries warmed by the sun, sweet-tart juice running down fingers feeding them to her that she licks off, faint hints of salt mingling with everything else.

She thinks of conversations with Lando and Poe over drinks, debating the merits of various models of old ships, ignoring Finn and the General who just look at each other despairingly. Rose showing her what ship maintenance with non-scavenged parts is like, and Rey demonstrating how to construct something out of scrap that’ll get you to the closest repair yard. Her and Finn sparring: teaching him quarterstaff and him showing her how to shoot a blaster straight; hand to hand matches turning into a different kind of tussle.

The feeling of piling onto an old couch in what has been dubbed the new Resistance war room (even though the closest it gets to combat these days is arguing about who gets sanitation duty), figuring out how to rebuild and maybe even expand again. The return of something in Leia’s eyes that she wouldn’t quite call hope, that makes Rey think they might have a chance after all.

She lets it all pour into the connection between them, a bright golden light that scours everything clean like the desert sand. She expects him to flinch a little bit, not curl up like a new leaf under the harshness of an unrelenting sun. He bolts, finding himself a corner to back himself into.

_It’s all right, it’s all right_, she tries to soothe.

_If this is the remedy, I would sooner die of the disease, _he snaps.

_You can’t mean that. _

_What will be left, when the light purges everything?_ He does.

_Ben, please! Even Vader, Anakin, in the end— _

_I’m not him. I wanted to be, but I fell short. _(She doesn’t ask who he’s referring to. She’s afraid to know.) _I always will._

_I can help you! _She reaches out her hand. _We can help you. Think of your mother. She misses her son. _

She feels him waver, and in that part of a moment she hopes harder than she ever has in her life. _Force, make him understand. For Leia, if not him. Please. _

And then, there is nothing. Not the flat blankness of being blocked out, but as if the connection was deliberately severed. She can’t sense him now, not the way she could before. He’s still alive; she knows that much.

A dull ache like a phantom limb moves across her consciousness, her mind’s surprise at expecting something to be there (as it has been for so long) but is not. But as she gets used to casting out her awareness unfettered again, it feels good to do, like a porg stretching out its wings after a long sleep.

For the first time in months, her mind feels like it’s truly her own again. As she steps outside to join her friends in the park, she smiles. It is something she intends to savor.


End file.
